The Professionals Strike Back?

Imagine, if you will, that the U.S. Open golf tournament did not have a qualification process. Imagine that any amateur player willing to plop down $10,000 could gain entry to this tournament and take their shot alongside Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. Now imagine that it had been this way for more than a decade, and that in that decade not a single big name professional player had won the U.S. Open, and only a handful had even been in contention on the final day.

This is about where we find ourselves in the World Series of Poker. No professional poker player has won the title since Carlos Mortensen in 2001. In 2002 virtual unknown Robert Varkyoni won the title from nowhere, and about the same time ESPN began televising the tournament with the revolutionary "hole card cam" that allows home viewers to see each player's hole cards. Amateurs began flooding to the sport and to the tournament, and for each of the last seven years we have seen people we've never heard of take home millions of dollars from the Main Event.

Now, you might argue that my analogy fails because golf is an actual sport based solely on talent and skill. Luck plays very little role in deciding whether your shot goes into a sandtrap or lands on the green, beyond perhaps a gust of wind or an errant bird getting in the way. Poker is not really a sport, despite being broadcast by ESPN. It is a game of both skill and chance, and thus far less predictable. But it has still been a frustrating thing for those who love the game and its particular nuances and challenges to watch it be flooded by nobodies who have managed to muscle the well known players out of the limelight at the Main Event every year. Perhaps that's precisely because the fall of the professionals has suggested that luck plays a far bigger role than skill in determining who wins and who loses. If skill were that important, the naysayers argue, then the highly skilled and proven professionals should be able to beat the lucky noobs. So, the naysayers ask, why the hell haven't these highly skill pros won another one yet?

This year may be the professionals' answer to those naysayers. For the first time since 2003, two well known professional poker players have made the final table of 9 who will regroup in November to battle it out for the World Championship in the Main Event. Every single person in that nine has already guaranteed himself (no ladies at the final table this year, yet again) at least a million dollars, but to Phil Ivey and Jeff Shulman the $8.5 million for first place is probabaly not as important as you'd expect, compared to the title and what it would mean for the discouraged ranks of professional players cheering them on.

"You have no idea how bad I want this," said Ivey. "I can taste it now."

Ivey has come close to the final table before, bubbling in 2003. (For poker novices out there, the last person who is eliminated before the final table or before the money is known as "the Bubble" slot, a particularly painful experience for the person who can practically taste the cash and glory but falls just shy.) He is considered by many to be the best poker player alive today, and is known as the "Tiger Woods of poker." Shulman made the final table in 2000 but finished in seventh place after once holding a massive chip stack lead. These two have not just the notoriety of television exposure and poker website sponsorship, but also a proven record of success in the form of World Series bracelets and millions of dollars won.

You might assume an amateur player like me, who has only been playing poker for a few years myself and has lost far more than I've won in casino play, would be rooting for the anonymous inexperienced and unknown poker players who have flooded the game. It would make sense since I am one of them, but you'd be wrong. I want one of the pros to win it all again this year, even though I recognize the odds are long for both. Why? It's hard to explain. Maybe it's that I need to believe that skill will triumph over luck at least half of the time, that making the right decisions still counts for something in this game. Maybe it's that I feel burned by the volatility and danger that inexperienced players bring to the sport, so I am hoping that the re-emergence of pros would diminish that to a degree. Maybe it's that I still want to have idols, people who I can look up to because they are better than I am at something that I love. I really don't know if I can articulate it.

Whatever the reason, I'll be watching in November and sweating Ivey and Shulman. I also think their success this year has reinvigorated my own love for poker and my desire to work towards being a better player through discipline, study, and effort. When I started playing in casino tournaments I wasn't really ready, and perhaps I'm still not. I had come a long way from when I started playing but I still had much to learn. Like many of those wide-eyed amateurs, I walked into a casino and threw away my money hoping that luck would take me the rest of the way when skill could not. Some people who did the very same thing have made fortunes, but in doing so and giving people the impression that anyone can do this thing they cheapened the game. I'm going to recommit myself to doing it the right way. I guess I have embraced the possibly foolhardy belief that eventually skill should triumph over luck in this game, and that thankfully skill is the only part of the game that can be intentionally acquired. But a little luck wouldn't hurt either.

On the margins of the Sotomayor confirmation hearing

If you watched yesterday's first round of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (I couldn't stomach the condescension and hypocrisy from Sessions et al.), you may have noticed a woman in the gallery began yelling at one point about overturning Roe v. Wade. She was promptly removed and arrested.

She was Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe.

McCorvey's path to this point has been a strange and sad one. As a young poor pregnant woman, she became the plaintiff in the landmark case that legalized abortion. It was too late for McCorvey, who gave her own baby up for adoption because the SCOTUS case was decided well after her due date. In the 1980's, McCorvey "came out" as Jane Roe and began to assert that she had been used by the lawyers who argued her case. In the 1990's she came out as a lesbian, and wrote a book about her experiences in the case and since. She worked at several abortion clinics and was an ardent advocate for abortion rights.

Strangely, despite the general distaste among the conservative Christian anti-abortion crowd for homosexuality, McCorvey was befriended by several anti-abortion activists after her book came out. They baptized her and eventually converted her to their side, and she has since become an extreme anti-abortion activist in her own right, working with Operation Rescue. (I'm just guessing here, but the guilt angle that she had caused the legalization of a procedure that has led to millions of abortions was probably a pretty powerful tool in the Operation Rescue folks' conversion arsenal.) She petitioned the Supreme Court in 2005 to reconsider and vacate its ruling in her case, though that motion was denied. Since her conversion, McCorvey went from being a Baptist to a Catholic, and then proclaimed that she was no longer a lesbian.

Thinking about the strange twists and turns of McCorvey's life, I get a sense of a woman who never really felt like she belonged anywhere, and who was always looking for acceptance and purpose. I wish she could have found that from the women like me who want to thank her for being the face of the fight for the right we hold so dear.

Abortion juice

I wrote about this briefly on Twitter, and realized it was one of those strange but funny stories that would be perfect for a blog post.

Back in college, I spent a year living with a fun-loving and completely batshit crazy woman we will call A. I had been an RA and A had been one of my residents, and we became fast friends. A liked to live on the wild side, though, and in that regard we really could not be more different. (I merely occasionally dabbled.) By way of example, I went to a Bush concert with A during that year, and she was tripping on acid. She decided during the show that Gavin Rossdale was her soulmate, and proceeded to force me to travel to other Bush shows for the better part of a year until she finally actually met the guy in person and he showed her zero interest. (Even back then he was hooking up with Gwen Stefani as they toured together.)

Anyhow, A was a bit of a hellion. She kept sheets of acid in our freezer, she had a fake ID she'd obtained by stealing a military ID from someone she babysat for in high school and altering the photograph with one of her own, and she was the first friend I ever had who was just unabashedly and unapologetically promiscuous. A had an endless stream of guys in her life, and somewhat famously kept a list on our refrigerator that she called her "Fuck List." In order, it listed every guy she slept with and she updated it religiously. (At the time, she made a Fuck List for me that was blank for most of that year, until I started dating the guy that I would move in with by the end of that year. Yes, I was a late bloomer.)

A wasn't great about birth control, however, since she was still on her father's military health insurance and had to go all the way to Panama City to get her birth control prescriptions filled. She somehow let the prescription lapse for awhile, and then she unexpectedly got pregnant. We panicked together as she peed on stick after stick, and tried to figure out what to do. At the time I was active in the FSU Women's Center and FSU NOW, and my good feminist friends with their knowledge of pre-Roe v. Wade methods of dealing with unwanted pregnancy told us about an old wives' tale that drinking a strong concoction of ginger juice could induce miscarriage.

A and I decided to try this, in the hopes that we could avoid the expensive and painful surgical abortion that she was otherwise going to have. We went to Publix and bought several pounds of raw ginger. I peeled it, cut it up, and boiled it in some water until it reduced down to a few cups. I made her try it, and it was awful. She said she couldn't possibly drink it, so we decided to add it to a jug of Kool-Aid. I mixed half of a large jug of red cherry Kool-Aid, and added the ginger liquid. We let it cool, and then I poured A a big glass. She insisted that I had to try it first, because she was worried she might hurl. I will never EVER forget the terrible flavor of that one sip that I took. I thought it might burn my throat, the spiciness of the ginger was so strong. But I tried to keep a brave face and show A that she could drink this stuff. She managed to suffer through about half a glass before giving up. We put the jug back into the fridge, intending to try again the next day.

We must have either given up on the "abortion juice" or forgotten about it, because a week later it was still in the back of the fridge. Around about this time I had started getting semi-involved with G, and after a party at our place he had slept over on the sofa. (We weren't officially dating at this point.) I woke up early the next day to go to class, and when I returned he was sleeping in my bed. I woke him up, and after we talked for awhile he asked me what the hell kind of alcohol we were brewing in our fridge. I stared at him puzzled for a second, and then realized that he meant the abortion juice. Turns out, G had gotten up in the middle of the night looking for a drink, and had found what looked like a jug of red Kool-Aid in the back of the fridge. He had poured a big glass, taken a swig, and been met with the unholy burn of concentrated ginger. When I told him the story of what he had just drank, I laughed so hard I nearly peed.

Ultimately we abandoned the abortion juice idea, and A went through the usual method of terminating the pregnancy. I was there, holding her hand, through the whole procedure. That entire experience made me hyper-vigilant about my own birth control methods once I had occasion to employ them a couple months later, when I finally wrote a name on my own Fuck List. But, I had completely forgotten about abortion juice until a friend from college blogged today about making homemade ginger beer, and that awful taste memory came flooding back. None for me, thanks.

Obsessive Hostess strikes again

I'm having a Fourth of July cookout, and the amount of work and cooking to be done is starting to bear down hard upon me. I have decided on the following menu:

Appetizers:
Vegetable tray with dill dip
mini lobster rolls
bacon wrapped dates stuffed with bleu cheese
chips with salsa, guacamole and queso

Mains:
Burgers (of many varieties)
Hot Dogs
Grilled Chicken Breasts

Sides:
My should-be-famous potato salad
Pasta Salad with zucchini, tomato and feta
Grilled vegetables and corn
fresh cut fruit

Desserts:
Lemon cupcakes
Strawberry shortcakes

Drinks:
Sangria
Beer
Water and sodas

So, um, yeah. It's a lot of food. I still need to shop, and then tomorrow I will spend the whole day cooking. The beauty of this menu is that it can ALL be prepared in advance, except for the things that need to be grilled the day of the cookout.

The far bigger issue is that hosting parties makes me suddenly hyper-aware of all the things I meant to fix up in my house but never got around to. I meant to finish paining the living room, and to paint my bedroom, and to paint over that water damage spot on the cieling, but I never did. Now I am trying to calculate...can I get all those done tomorrow? (No, and I shouldn't even try. But I still might.)

I also have let my deck languish this year, and haven't bothered to clean it or set it up properly at all. I have a basement full of cutesy things to decorate the deck with for a party, but the thought of actually putting all of that together and making it look nice is so exhausting. So, I cajoled my parents into coming and helping me with that part. Nothing like free labor!

Once the actual cookout comes, I will feel the wash of a sense of accomplishment, but until then it is nothing but worry. I worry that 36 people still have not RSVPed and so I have no idea how much to cook. I worry that my house is small and if somehow 40 people show up, where will I put them all? I worry it will be insanely hot and my air conditioner will crap out again. All of these things are, sadly, eminently possible.

I also am trying to figure out where would be the best spot to go to watch fireworks near my house. I am surrounded by several massive multi-story trees, so I doubt we could see much from my deck. However, I am less than a mile from Piedmont Park, which should have a good view of several fireworks shows. Anyone know any other good spots relatively close to Virginia-Highland where I can take my merry band of friends for a good ooh ahhh view of fireworks? Let me know in the comments.

Many wonder why I take on this sort of thing when it carries this much stress, and it's hard to explain but the truth is that I do love it. I love having an excuse to cook for other people, and to see them enjoy a great meal that I prepared. I love bringing friends from a variety of circles together and watching them have a good time. I love playing hostess, even though I try too hard to make everything perfect. It may not appear like it as I worry and work, but I live for this sort of thing. I promise.

Restaurant review: Varasano's

If you have never heard of Jeff Varasano, congratulate yourself for successfully avoiding one of the most bizarre and annoying internet phenomena here in Atlanta. Years ago, Varasano moved to Atlanta from New York and lamented our lack of authentic New York style pizza. He then set out to re-create his favorite slice from NYC institution Patsy's, and documented every painstaking step on his website. Varasano had to rig up his electric home oven to run the clean cycle in order to reach the desired 900 degrees for perfect crust "char," and he also had to agonize for what seems like years over proper fermentation of the sourdough crust and the right variety of tomatoes for the sauce. If you think I'm obsessive about my cupcakes, you ain't seen nothing yet.

After a few years, he thought he had the perfect recipe and began hosting pizza parties in his home to show it off. Varasano built a following, trashing a few local and national pizza restaurant stars in the process, and it seemed inevitable that he would eventually open a restaurant. In March, he finally did in a shiny new space in a condo building on Peachtree. I'd heard both good and bad things about the pizza available at Varasano's restaurant, but the really interesting thing was how strong the opinions were on both sides. A discussion of a preliminary review at Creative Loafing's Omnivore blog became known as the Pizza Wars, it was so contentious. (A later review after the usual new restaurant kinks had started to work out was more favorable.) Varasano had both many fans of his pizza and many detractors hoping he would fail. I found myself pulled in the latter direction.

And so, last night I walked into the restaurant both hoping for a great meal, and yet eager for a delicious taste of schadenfreude. I wanted Varasano's to not live up to the insane hype. We went with a group of eleven, and decided to each order our own pie so that we could share different varieties amongst the table. It sounds insane to have each person get an entire pizza for themselves, and yet I think out of 11 pizzas only four slices left in to-go boxes. It just so happens that Varasano's pizza is so delicious that you feel compelled to keep eating.

I had a simple salad first, romaine lettuce with roasted peppers, a few sparse croutons, and a lemon and olive oil dressing. The dressing was delicious, but the salad was nothing special. Two other friends tried the Caprese salad and seemed moderately disappointed. Perhaps that was our mistake for not focusing solely on the restaurant's raison d'etre, the pizza.

For my pizza I ordered the margherita, the archetypal pizza that started it all for Varasano. I paid the extra $5 for bufala mozzarella, though I'm not sure it was necessary. The pizza had just the right texture, with obviously very high quality and delicious ingredients. My only complaint was that I would have liked more basil on the pizza, but that was my mistake for not requesting it in advance. It certainly did not stop me from eating all but one slice, which I gave to a friend. I savored every bite.

I also had a small sampling of a caramelized onion and emmenthaler cheese pizza, which was also very tasty but a big departure from what I had already been eating. I would order it again, but you have to be a lover of onions and a strong cheese flavor in order to appreciate a pizza like that. Others had pizzas topped with arugula and lemon, salami and spiced olives, and a dessert pizza with medjool dates, honey and walnuts. I did not sample those, but heard no complaints and many rave reviews.

The space is nice and modern, and feels more like any other trendy restaurant than a pizza place. Waitstaff was mostly attentive and helpful. The bar does not serve beer on draft, which many found odd, but the beer and wine list contained many interesting oddities. The desserts that others sampled, an espresso panna cotta and the famous Italian donuts, seemed to be good though I did not try either one.

All in all, as much as I hate to admit it, I would recommend the pizza at Varasano's to anyone. I intend to go back very soon.

The interminable saga of Troy Davis continues

If it seems like I've been talking about the Troy Davis case for years, it's because I have. Apparently, I will be talking about it for a few more months at least. Today the Supreme Court adjourned for the summer without deciding whether to grant or deny Davis' habeas corpus petition.

After the Eleventh Circuit denied Davis' most recent appeal, his attorneys took the rare step of filing a habeas corpus petition directly with the Supreme Court. So, SCOTUS now has the option of either granting it (which hasn't been done since 1925), remanding for an evidentiary hearing to the district court (which is occasionally granted) or denying it outright. I found the last option the most likely, but was surprised to see that Davis' petition was not included in the final list of orders issued today before the Court adjourned until September.

The no-decision today essentially means that Davis' petition will not be acted upon until this fall when the court reconvenes. Davis will get a few more months on this earth, at least. I still have very little faith that Court intervention will occur at this point, with nearly all of his legal options rejected or exhausted. But I am very open to the universe surprising cynical ol' me just this once.

Mood Music: No Shame Edition

There are so many fantastic Michael Jackson songs I could choose from to remember him by, but I have to go with this one. Six years ago I drove from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta with a good friend who I did not know very well at the time. We came across this song on a CD of hers, and she initially went to skip it to the next song until I told her to stop. We had that moment of understanding when you realize that someone else also loves the song that you love, that everyone else thinks is cheesy. And then we began belting it out at the top of our lungs together.

For six years we have kept that secret, refused to tell anyone else that we love this song. But today, I confess. I love this song, and it's just one slice of the oeuvre of an immensely talented artist. Whatever you think about Michael Jackson's personal life, his appearance, his criminal trial, or anything else, if you were a child of my generation then he held a huge place in your musical awakening. And we will all miss him.